by Diane Hoh
“It’s not her,” he said with authority. “It’s not her. It’s a trick. Someone mimicking a child’s voice, that’s all it is.” Reardon glanced around the hallway, then up at the yellowed ceiling overhead. “The question is, where is it coming from?”
“Everywhere,” Nora said softly, her voice muffled by his chest. “It’s coming from everywhere!” She lifted her head then, looked up at him. “You really don’t think it’s Mindy? You’re not just saying that because I freaked?”
“I should have noticed right off,” he said apologetically. “But I’ve never heard the little girl speak, and it did sound like a kid at first. But listen, Nora. Listen to it carefully.”
She still had her hands over her ears, but she could hear his words clearly. “No!” she cried stubbornly, pressing her hands more tightly against her ears. “I won’t listen! It’s horrible. I just want it to stop.”
Reardon tugged at her hands, pulled them away from her ears, held them in his. “It isn’t Mindy,” he insisted. “Just listen, okay?”
“Nor-rie! I wanta see my daddy! Come get me!”
And this time, Nora heard what she hadn’t heard before. She heard in the child’s voice the same sinister, taunting tone of the voice in the barn, that disembodied voice that had sent the small but very sharp pitchfork flying at her from the loft.
“It’s not Mindy,” she breathed, her body sagging backward, against the wall, her eyes closing in relief. “You’re right. It’s not her. It’s the other one.”
“The other one?”
“It’s the voice from the barn.” Nora opened her eyes. “The barn you searched. I know you didn’t find anything, but he was there.” She shrugged her shoulders. “And now he’s here.” Her face was very pale, her eyes wide with fear.
“I don’t think so. I don’t think he’s in the house. I think it’s a recording.”
“A recording?”
“Yeah. A tape. It sounds tinny. Our mimicking friend made a tape and probably used some kind of remote to turn it on. That way, there’s no chance of him being caught when we hear the voice and go searching. He’s already gone.”
“He’s not here?”
“Nope. I’ll have to call this in, though. We need to find that tape and whatever kind of electronic equipment he’s using. Might give us a clue.”
“You do think it’s the kidnapper doing all of this? Not just someone who’s mad at me because they think I took Mindy?”
“Yep. I could be wrong, but that’s what I think. Wish I knew how the two things are connected, but I don’t. Maybe it’s just as simple as the fact that you were close to the child.”
“Am,” Nora said tremulously, “am close to the child. Please don’t talk about Mindy in the past tense.”
“Sorry.”
The voice stopped then, as abruptly as it had begun. There was something about the sudden silence filling the hall that told Nora it was over. For now.
“C’mon,” Reardon urged, taking her hand. “I’ll call the station, we’ll get some people out here to search, and this time it won’t be just your room. I’m pretty sure that the captain will agree that this entire house, and the grounds, the barn, and the garage should all be searched, he’ll have to drag a couple of men off the other search party, but they hadn’t been having much luck on campus, anyway. Maybe they’ll actually find something here.”
While he made the phone call from Nora’s room, she sat at the window, holding all of her stuffed animals for comfort, fighting to do two things: erase the taunting voice from her mind, and then, when that effort failed, concentrate instead on identifying it.
It had to be someone who not only knew Mindy well, but knew Nora, too. Knew where she lived, knew of her connection to Mindy, and knew when she was home and when she wasn’t.
Nora drew in her breath sharply, her eyes darting to and fro in the room. Was someone watching her? Watching the house? If there really was a recording device, as Reardon suspected, wouldn’t someone have had to be spying on the house to know when to play the tape?
Maybe they just played it at random, figuring sooner or later, she’d hear it.
Did they have to be inside the house to send the fake child’s voice echoing through the halls?
“No,” Reardon answered when he’d hung up the phone and Nora asked him the question, “not necessarily. With all the electronic equipment available today, he could probably be as far away as campus while we’re here listening to his handiwork. A device planted here, a remote control in his hands, the push of a button, and we’re listening to his Top-40. Simple. And very effective.”
Nora shuddered. “I don’t think he’s that far away. I think he’s much closer than campus. I can feel that someone’s around. I think he’s watching the house.”
“Well, if he is, we’ll find him. The captain is sending two officers to help search the place. Ditto the barn and garage. If he’s here, we’ll find him.”
Nora sat in her room, the door locked upon Reardon’s instructions, and waited. She could hear heavy feet tramping up and down stairs, padding across carpeting or tile, could hear doors opening and closing, drawers being slammed shut, deep, authoritative voices calling back and forth.
They won’t find anything, she told herself angrily, aimlessly stroking Harry the hippo’s fat nose. He’s too clever. And then maybe Reardon’s captain won’t believe it was a recording. Maybe he and the other police officers will think it was Mindy’s voice all along and that while they were busy searching for a recording device, I sneaked out of the house and spirited Mindy off to some other hiding place.
She heard them leaving the house, their footsteps on the damp ground echoing up into her open window. They went straight to the barn, their voices drifting around to the rear of the house. After a while, they returned to Nora’s side of the house and moved to the garage and its upstairs apartment.
When she heard footsteps leaving the garage and heading back toward the house, she jumped up from the window seat, her arms still filled with stuffed animals, and hurried from the room, too anxious to learn what they might have discovered to wait until they arrived at her door.
Bright sunshine flooding in through the stained-glass half-moon window above the front door nearly blinded her as she reached the top of the stairs. She had to raise one hand to shield her eyes from the brilliant golden glow as she ran down the steps.
She was midway down the wide, curving staircase when she heard the voice. But this time it wasn’t mimicking Mindy. This time, it was the voice of a full-grown adult that hissed down at Nora. “Foolish girl, shielding your eyes like that. Don’t you know you should keep your eyes wide open at all times? You just never know what might happen if you can’t see what’s coming, do you?”
Gasping, Nora turned around on the stairs to glance up fearfully. She saw above her a figure so completely bathed in the streaming rays of sunshine that it was made indiscernible by the lemon-yellow garishness of the light.
As Nora turned to look up, her left heel, already on its way down to the next step, hit something. She knew instantly that it Wasn’t the solid, unyielding wood of the stair step that she’d been anticipating. Because the object moved beneath her foot. Rolled beneath her foot.
“And stay away from that cop or you’ll be sorry!” the voice, hidden within the protective curtain of bright yellow light, hissed.
Nora’s left foot began to roll backward.
The stairs at Nightingale Hall were old, and not very deep from front to back. There was little room on any step for maneuvering.
Nora tried. As her left foot sped backward without her consent, she fought hard to save herself. The stuffed animals flew out of her arms as she reached out to clutch at the stair railing. But the railing was no longer within reach. She struggled to maintain her balance, to stop the left foot’s involuntary motion backward, but it was hopeless.
Her left leg rolled swiftly off the edge of the step, as if it wanted to separate itself from her, deal
ing Nora’s equilibrium a final, fatal blow. Although her arms flailed wildly in one last, desperate attempt to clutch the thick, wooden railing, her body was already toppling backward.
“So long! See you next fall!” she heard from above her.
Chapter 13
THE WOMAN I LIVED with knew nothing about teenagers. I had so many questions, but she wouldn’t, or couldn’t, answer them. I begged to be allowed to go into town with her. I wanted so much to see other people, see how they dressed and talked and what they did for fun. But she said I couldn’t. That’s all, I just couldn’t. When I asked her why not, she said, “Never you mind.”
I stole the truck once, to run away. I was thirteen. Didn’t have the foggiest notion how to drive it, since she’d never let me go anywhere with her.
Still, I stole it, when she was napping late one winter afternoon. I just threw on the jacket she’d made me out of her old bathrobes, and pulled the cabin door open and sneaked out to the truck and climbed in. She always left the keys in the ignition, because there wasn’t anyone way out there to steal it.
I turned the key and stomped down hard on all the pedals I could see. There were three, and I didn’t know which was which, so I just slammed them all, really hard, and the truck made this horrendous, horrible noise and she came shooting out of that cabin like her hair was on fire. She wasn’t all that young by then, but man, did she ever move fast!
I don’t know who was more surprised when the truck moved, her or me, but all of a sudden, there I was, careening out of the yard and down the dirt path she took to town, trying to steer so I wouldn’t hit the trees. I could just barely see over the steering wheel, had to sit up really straight and stretch my neck like crazy, and then my legs didn’t want to reach, so I had to stretch them out, too, and that hurt.
She caught up with me, and jumped up on the running board. Probably one of the scariest moments of my life was seeing her face plastered to the window, her gray hair flying out around her, her eyes wild, using one fist to pound on the window while she held on to the door with her other hand.
I knew she wasn’t going to give up, but I still kept going, swerving this way and that because I really couldn’t see very well, and it was getting dark very fast and I didn’t know where the lights were, didn’t know how to turn them on.
She was screaming at me through the window, I could hear her, screaming at me to stop, shouting that I couldn’t leave her, I couldn’t leave, what was I doing, where did I think I was going?
Away from her, that’s where I was going. Away from her and that awful little cabin, away from the deadly loneliness and the crazy-making boredom and the weird, strange life that we led. I knew from magazines and books and television that it wasn’t normal. Not even close. I wanted normal. I wanted what other people had. And to get that, I had to first get away from her.
I tried. I tried so hard, but I couldn’t really drive the truck and it got dark so fast and then I couldn’t see and she was still hanging on for dear life, pounding on the window and screaming at me to stop the truck, stop the truck right now!
I didn’t stop it. A tree did. Didn’t even see it coming at me out of the darkness, but suddenly, there it was, and I slammed into it or it slammed into me. She went flying off the running board and I was thrown into the steering wheel so hard, all the breath was knocked out of me.
I hadn’t locked the door, because I didn’t know you could, and the next thing I knew, there she was, dragging me out of the truck by my hair, and back into the cabin. Saying that I couldn’t ever, ever leave her, not after all she’d done for me.
I never did ask her exactly what it was she had done for me.
I don’t think I’ve ever been that scared since then. Her face smushed up against the window, me wanting so desperately to get away from there, from her, and then realizing that she wasn’t going to let it happen, that she wasn’t going to let me go … ever. Ever, ever, ever!
I stayed in bed for a week after that. She brought me soup, and I threw it at her. Finally, she said if I didn’t open my mouth and eat something, she would hold my nose closed until I did open up, because if I didn’t, I would die of starvation and she loved me and didn’t want that.
Loved me? I didn’t think so. That wasn’t how my books talked about love. Keeping someone a prisoner, never letting them know other people or go to school or learn for themselves what life is really all about, I didn’t think that was love. Maybe she thought it was, but I didn’t. I knew better.
But I ate, finally. And after a while, I got out of bed and got dressed and did my chores.
I started reading again because I knew if I didn’t, I really would lose my mind. She kept a real close eye on me after that. And she never left the keys in the truck again. I guess she kept them on her, because I never saw them lying around any place or hanging on a hook somewhere.
It was a long time before I tried running away again.
Chapter 14
NORA FELL BACKWARD, AND heavily, her body much too tense and rigid with fear to easily absorb a tumble down half a flight of bare wooden stairs. Her back hit first, her spine striking the hard edge of a step with a sharp, cracking sound. The force of that blow sent her head snapping backward. The still-tender spot on her skull from the collision with the dinosaur’s pointed horns slammed into one of the lower steps.
She cried out in pain. The blow so stunned her that she scarcely felt her body continuing to tumble, heels over head, down the remaining steps.
She landed, semiconscious, at the bottom of the stairs. She lay stretched out, full-length, on the hardwood floor. It struck her dazed mind as odd that although she was aware of the cool, smooth floor beneath her body, her head seemed to be resting on something much softer. There had been no cracking sound when she’d landed, and she hadn’t felt what should have been the severe impact of her head against wood.
Stunned and hurting, she lay perfectly still as running footsteps approached the front door. The police officers who had been searching outside must have heard her fall, heard her cry out, and were coming to help.
That was nice of them. Wasn’t that nice of them? Now she wouldn’t have to lie here all day with however many broken bones and maybe a fractured skull, and wonder if she was bleeding inside and would be dead by evening. Help was on its way. Nice.
Nora noticed, then, out of the corner of her eye that there was a little roller skate lying just inches from her aching head. A small, plastic, child’s roller skate in bright primary colors of red and blue and yellow. It really was very small. Just about Mindy’s size, Nora thought hazily with the part of her brain that was still functioning.
But, her brain pointed out, not so small that it couldn’t almost kill someone whose left foot landed on it halfway down the middle of a steep staircase. Which, of course, anyone who might have planted the skate there would know. Anyone would know that.
So she knew that someone had put it there deliberately, and she knew that the skate had been meant for her.
That much, she was sure of.
“If you hadn’t been carrying those stuffed animals,” Jonah Reardon said as he knelt beside Nora, “you’d have split your skull open like a teacup.” He pointed beneath her head. “You’re lying on a stuffed hippopotamus.”
“Harry? Harry saved my life?”
“Yep. Anything broken?”
Nora gingerly flexed arms and legs. “No, I don’t think so.”
One of the policemen moved toward the phone. “Ambulance,” he said brusquely.
“No!” Nora pulled herself up on one elbow. “No ambulance, no hospital, no infirmary. I’m okay.” But she winced in pain as she sat up all the way and her backbone reminded her of its collision with the stair step. To Reardon, she said, “There was someone here. Up there, at the top of the stairs. I couldn’t see who it was. The sun blinded me. But he said I should watch where I was going, that I should stay away from you, and he left his calling card.” She pointed to the brightly colored skat
e.
Jonah Reardon picked it up, held it in one hand. “This is what you tripped over?”
Nora nodded. “There aren’t any little kids in this house. That roller skate doesn’t belong to anyone here. He put it there. He knew I’d never even notice it. Of course, I might have if he hadn’t called out to me.” Nora shivered in revulsion. “He was gloating! He knew I was going to fall.”
“Was it the same voice we heard earlier?”
“The same voice? Oh.” Nora thought for a minute. “Well, he wasn’t trying this time to sound like a small child, so I don’t know. Maybe. It sounded … different. A kind of loud whisper. I couldn’t even tell if it was male or female, and I’d never be able to identify it, if that’s what you’re asking.”
While Reardon stayed with Nora, the other police officers once again searched the house. They returned to announce that any intruder had probably used the back staircase to make his getaway without being seen. “If he was at the top of the stairs like Miss Mulgrew says,” the older officer said, “he could have heard us coming and run down the back stairs into the kitchen and out the back door while we were coming up the front steps.”
Nora wasn’t surprised that they hadn’t found her tormentor. She hadn’t expected them to. But she was amazed that they weren’t questioning her story about the voice at the top of the stairs. Their acceptance of it as truth was a real surprise.
“You sure you don’t need a doctor?” the younger policeman asked her. “You look pretty shook to me. And that had to have been a real bad fall. Are you sure nothing’s broken?”
“No, really, I’m fine. Thanks for asking, though.” And although she wavered a little when she stood up, Nora soon regained her equilibrium. Except for a sharp, stinging sensation along her backbone that told her that she’d scraped at least one layer of skin off it, she felt reasonably okay. “It’s not like I fell all the way from the top. I was halfway down the stairs when I hit the skate.”
Remembering, Nora fell silent, realizing how lucky she had been. If he had arrived a moment or two sooner and given her a shove from the very top of the staircase, she wouldn’t be standing on both feet now. She wouldn’t be standing at all.
